Mom of Baby Struggling to Swim in Viral Video Claps Back at Critics

A video of a 6-month-old baby struggling to swim is going viral on Facebook, and its caption, "So hard to watch but every kid should learn this young," feels like a bit of an understatement. In the just under two-minute clip, a little girl named Josie goes after a sandal in a pool, only to fall in, but flip onto her back and float, while making seemingly anguished noises. Warning: Watching it is rough.

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Thankfully, around 90 seconds in, a woman lifts the girl out of the water and says, "I've got you, baby." The woman behind the video is Keri Morrison, a mom from Palm Beach County, Florida, who believes in a method known as Infant Swimming Resource, or ISR, which starts with babies as young as 6 months. ISR teaches kids to roll onto their backs to float, rest, and breathe, then maintain that position until help arrives.

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"Children are curious, capable, and have an uncanny ability to overcome obstacles like pool fences," ISR says on its website. "At ISR, we take that ability and teach them skills to potentially save themselves if they find themselves in the water alone."

"You're seeing a 6-month-old sitting on the steps playing, which can be a real-life situation, she falls in and she turns over and saves herself and floats for over a minute and a half," Morrison told the TODAY show about the video. "I don't see how there could be anything negative about that."

Morrison's taking her daughter's ISR education very seriously, as her 2 1/2-year-old son Jake accidentally drowned three years ago.

"I wish I could go back in time and put my son in these lessons,'' Morrison said to TODAY. "I'm pretty confident that he would be here, and as a parent, I felt like I failed my son, and I was just determined that was not going to happen with my daughters."

Morrison's Facebook post has been shared over 11,000 times and has racked up over 1,500 comments. Some are critical of Morrison, like Kate Matt Kane, who wrote, "No fucking way. That made my stomach in knots just watching. I don't care how safe or what classes the parents put the baby in. No way." But there are also many supportive remarks. A woman named Erin Gooch defends the practice: "This baby has obviously gone through infant safety self rescue classes. To pass they need to not only be able to back float like this child but also do it fully clothed in jackets and boots. I don't see this as cruel. If this baby ever fell into a body of water, she would be able to save herself long enough for someone to come help her. A bigger shame is all the kids who are never taught these skills and who drown in pools and other bodies of water."